Truth Hurts, Little Girl
by Harrygirlie
Summary: A handsome male face, sculptured, with high cheekbones, icy eyes, and a cruel, thin mouth. Smirking at her. The face and the expression were both so awfully familiar that Sarah felt her skin go instantly clammy.
1. At the Beginning

_Truth Hurts, Little Girl_

The swimming inner light of the crystal cast a phosphorescent gleam over Jareth's face, eerily lending him the appearance of a death mask. But even the thought of his handsome face seeming specter-like would not have deterred Jareth from the task at hand.

In the shimmering curve of the crystal's wall, an image flickered into life. A dark-haired girl sat upon her bed, a patchwork quilt tugged up over the lower half of her body; the hefty textbook nestled in her lap, coupled with the mundane and rather commonplace setting of her quite average bedroom, did not an engrossing scene create, and yet Jareth was drawn to it. The girl, it was to be noted, was quite pretty; not a breathtaking beauty, but she exuded an attractive combination of willfulness and innocence that made her very skin glow.

In short, Jareth had not this much doted on a single female since…well, never. Something about this girl, who was by far too young and easily much too pure for him, had ensnared him; as much as the arrogant and beautiful Goblin King would hate to voice it, the girl had, however unknowingly, sunk the claws of infatuation into him. Deeply.

But Jareth attempted to focus more on the girl's current state, rather than his own personal fascination with her. For he had noticed, with an odd wrenching sensation in the region of his chest, that grayish spots of moisture dappled the page open before the girl, and after watching for a substantial amount of time, it soon became apparent that the girl was not reading the text at all. Sarah Williams was crying, and it sent an odd shiver of anger through Jareth to see her in such a state.

"God, this is so _stupid_!" she burst out suddenly, and the surge of passion was obvious in her tone even through the distance and distortion it traveled to reach Jareth's ears.

"But it's not fair. It's really not."

Despite his concern for Sarah and her apparent trauma, Jareth's mouth curved into a smirk at the sound of this familiar phrase. The girl was quite prone to using it in times of despair, although she had been using it less and less, since…

Jareth abruptly lowered the crystal from his sight. It would do no good to dwell on such things. He forbade himself to even complete that last thought, as that would involve straying down a road he'd long since blockaded in his mind.

Sighing in a resigned fashion, Jareth allowed the crystal to slip from his fingers. The sphere seemed to give a ringing shriek as it shattered on the unyielding earthen tile, and icy shards of glass scuttled across the floor on impact.

A stooping goblin maiden crept quietly up beside the throne and swept the glittering slivers into a dustpan, shaking her head and tut-tutting to herself. Jareth had broken yet another crystal.

Sarah drew up the corner of her quilt, one she'd in fact had since her early childhood, to dab at the moisture sliding down her cheeks.

"I didn't even know him. You don't just _cry_ over someone you don't know!" Sarah said these words with a fortitude she did not truly feel she possessed at this point in time; her shoulders quivered slightly and she knew that she could not stem the steady flow of her tears just yet.

Suffice it to say, Sarah was not exactly worldly in her experiences with the opposite sex. In fact, she had very little experience at all. Earlier that very same day, Sarah had been coldly informed through the grapevine that her date to the spring formal, handsome Jeffrey Rockland, was opting to take his new girlfriend, the rather despicable Miranda Kelley, in her stead. Sarah was crushed. She had felt so mature, being asked to go with an older boy to the formal. Her friends had all been jealous; how many other sophomore girls got asked by boys like Jeffrey?

Sarah pushed these thoughts from her head wearily, and forced herself to stand. _I'll just have to get over it, that's all_. _He's just a boy_. Walking aimlessly across her room, her eyes fell on the colorful calendar tacked to her closet door; a blonde fairy draped in watery blue robes gave her a haughty look from the April page. Sarah's spirits lifted ever so slightly. In a little over a month, she would finally be 16.


	2. Intrusions

_In the pale cold before dawn, a dark-haired girl drifted, as though in a daze, down a flagstone path, the smooth stones of which were carpeted with vibrant orange flower petals. The silken feel of the petals beneath her bare feet was soothing, but went largely unnoticed. The girl's eyes, blue-tinged pewter in the early dimness, were thrown wide and seemed hollow; no thought or emotion was apparent behind their silvery screens. _

_Her filmy white gown shimmered as she moved, and its train, trailing gracefully across the path behind her, soon became littered with the fire-stained petals. The dying moonlight glinted off pearls sewn down the length of the garment like so many drops of milky rain._

_The brunette's steps quickened as the path ended; her feet trod faster through the thick velvet grass, and a sudden breeze, balmy and faintly spicy, blew through her long hair, whipping it behind her like a mahogany banner._

_The end came then, darkness closing abruptly about the scene like the shutting of a camera lens._

Sarah Williams shot out of sleep as though from a cannon, her heart slamming against her ribs in a frantic staccato. Sweat slicked across her fevered skin, and her hair clung damply to her forehead and neck.

She blinked twice in the silent dark of her bedroom, momentarily disoriented. Once she remembered where she was, she heaved a sigh and flopped backwards onto her pillow. _Again_. That was the third time in a week she'd had that dream, and she was still, irritatingly, no closer to finding what lay at the end of the path. No closer to finding out why this girl, who looked so remarkably like herself, broke into a frenzied run when her feet touched the grass.

After a moment, during which Sarah managed to get her erratic breathing under control, she shut her eyes and attempted to reenter the soft peace of sleep.

Sleep did not come.

With a fair, slender hand, almost feminine in its smooth perfection, Jareth shielded his disparately hued eyes from view. Several of the servant goblins, residents of the castle, huddled in a nervous cluster in the rear of the throne room, not eager to disturb the obviously disconcerted Goblin King.

Tension curled through Jareth's every muscle like thick steel wire; he knew something was coming, but it was not something that his crystals had been able to show him. Something was going to burst into the throne room, bestowing upon Jareth the Underground's Largest Headache…and soon.

A faint tinkling sound disturbed the edgy silence of the throne room. Instantly recalling exactly the creature such a noise heralded, Jareth let the hand slide from his face, not quite containing a moan of displeasure. Seconds later, the tinkling reached a rather musical crescendo, and it seemed the very sound exploded into glitter, which, drifting idly down through the air, came to rest at a pair of ivory feet.

Looking like a Botticelli angel carved from alabaster, a tiny little female, not more than two feet tall, stood before the King of the Goblins, her stance brazen. Gauzy opaline wings arced gracefully from her narrow shoulders. One delicate, pale hand was set at the petite waistline of a rather rich velvet gown, colored a pleasing shade of jade. The other hand teased and fingered tumbling cobalt waves that spiraled down to velveteen elbows. And from beneath such a vibrant coif, orange eyes shimmered as the pixie pouted impetuously at Jareth, lips like plums pursed together in a show of dainty insolence.

"Jareth, my darling lovely!" she exclaimed, her expression sweetening into a sunny, impish grin. Clasping those miniscule hands together, she fluttered nearer to the Goblin King, who could not easily have looked less happy to see her.

"Enyl," he replied dispassionately, the single word wrapped thickly with loathing.

The pixie's grin became a knowing smile, and she alighted at the side of Jareth's throne, leaning over the armrest so that her face drew uncomfortably near to his own.

"You want to know why I'm here?" Enyl cooed, her apricot eyes crinkling at the corners with a touch of wicked pleasure. An azure curl swung forth as she gently tilted her head, appraising Jareth with her usual blazing audacity.

"To involve me with your latest work in the noble art of sadism, of course," Jareth said almost lazily, the words shot through with acid.

Enyl gave him a wounded look, and sank down next to him on the stone seat of his throne.

"No, no, no, my sweet. That would never be an intention of _mine_," she simpered, stroking the cool white hand with which Jareth clasped his knee.

To an outsider, the scene would have looked almost sweet. Enyl, despite being nearly eight hundred years old, still gave off the illusion of a winged, disturbingly beautiful child, about six years of age. To see such a little person playing blithely with Jareth's fingers colored him as a tolerant uncle, although his sourly thoughtful expression brought to mind anything but a doting relative.

"Kindly unburden yourself of your news, and stop fiddling with my jewelry!" Jareth finally spat, the stony set of his jaw indicating that he was clenching his teeth.

Enyl dropped her hands from the silvery ring she'd been sliding up and down Jareth's index finger, and met his gaze with a fiery one that burned with all her years. Jareth pushed away a thought of the eeriness of seeing such a childlike face wreathed with inner age.

Sighing, the cherub-faced pixie used her opalescent, gossamer wings to hover above Jareth, regarding him with cooled coral eyes, out of which a chilly wisdom radiated.

She placed her child's hands on Jareth's cheeks, and he nearly winced at their wintry touch.

"There's a bit more to your little mortal fixation than meets the eye," Enyl said bluntly. As she caressed the milky slope of Jareth's cheek, he quirked a dark eyebrow in curiosity.

"Tell me more," Jareth demanded, grasping Enyl's slender wrists and wrenching them from his face. His dislike for the pixie ran deep and cold as a stream of ice, but if the wretch had news regarding Sarah, there was no stopping him drawing it out of her.


	3. Something Lurking

It has certainly been awhile, hasn't it? There's actually a hint of plot in this chapter though, so enjoy and, as always, I _treasure_ your reviews! ;)

-HG-

The next morning found Sarah lying like a stone amongst her rumpled sheets, sleep having finally claimed her once more at about five in the morning.

Sarah awoke as sunlight crept over her face, and although there were grape-skin semi-circles scooped cruelly from beneath her eyes, a faint smile played at her mouth. The dream had not replayed itself; instead, she'd fallen into a pleasant, dreamless black.

Rising drowsily from the tangled fabric web she'd unconsciously wound about her limbs, Sarah glanced languidly about the room. She ran a pale hand through her hopelessly snarled hair, stifling a yawn with the other. Walking over to the dainty vanity set against the opposite wall, she slid onto the bench and lifted a hairbrush to the messy mop atop her head.

A tuneless sort of humming blossomed in the air around her, and it took a few seconds for Sarah to realize the odd sound was slithering from her own lips. Consciously putting a stop to the noise, and dismissing it as a result of her own exhaustion, she continued to brush her hair; the plastic bristles tore through the knots, while Sarah examined her face in the mirror.

Her silvery blue eyes were glittering in the morning light that failed to infuse her rather pallid cheeks with any semblance of warmth. Frowning, Sarah continued to luxuriously run the brush through the now somewhat manageable tresses spilling over her narrow shoulders.

Then, something flickered very suddenly in the mirror Sarah faced. An eerie sort of sparkling seemed to be coming from the center of the glass, glowing softly inside of her reflection.

The hairbrush fell to the table with a clatter, having slipped from the abruptly weakened grasp of Sarah's fingers. She could've sworn she saw another face layer over her own for a split second. A handsome male face, sculptured, with high cheekbones, icy eyes, and a cruel, thin mouth. Smirking at her. The face and the expression were both so awfully familiar that Sarah felt her skin go instantly clammy. White-knuckled, she only realized how tightly she'd been clutching at the edge of the vanity when she slowly pulled away, to see deep red lines furrowing her palms.

_God, I'm losing my mind_, Sarah thought in private disgust. She shot to her feet so hastily that the bench on which she'd just been sitting crashed to the floor behind her.

_Coffee. I just need some caffeine to wake me up. That's all._

An odd twinge in the region of her chest pulled Sarah's lips into a wry smile. _I'm fine._

(' )

Sarah looked poorly. Jareth was absolutely beside himself. Suffice it to say, however, that this certainly did not show outwardly, save for the rigid set of his jaw. His hand still curved around the antiqued golden handle of the ornately decorated mirror he'd used to look at Sarah.

"So…she doesn't know." Jareth tapped his fingers against the unyielding arm of his throne, seized by a surge of impatience. Is that why she seemed ill? Is that why the sunken crescents beneath her eyes were so deep?

Enyl, in the process of twirling a cerulean curl around her tiny finger, suddenly looked alarmingly serious.

"She'll find out, love. There are less than forty days left before she comes of age," the pixie stated matter-of-factly. Her child's face was disconcertingly grave, and there was no playful spark igniting her fiery eyes. Her mulberry lips were pressed tight, and she pulled her finger slowly from the tightly wound lock of hair.

"Whether you would have her know or not, she must, eventually."

Jareth smirked and produced a crystal in the air. It swam with a bluish light, and vague, colorless images swirled across the glassy surface.

"Eventually."

He tossed the crystal to Enyl, grinning wolfishly. Her lily-white face broke in surprise when the delicate globe popped like a soap bubble in her hand.


End file.
